Time Sensitive - Edmund de Waal on Pottery, Poetry, and the Act of Letting Go

Edmund de Waal on Pottery, Poetry, and the Act of Letting Go

10/04/23 • 68 min

The London-based artist, master potter, and author Edmund de Waal has an astoundingly astute sense for the inner lives of objects. Each of his works, whether in clay or stone, is imbued with a certain alchemy, embodying traces of far-away or long-ago ancestors, ideas, and histories. This fall, two exhibitions featuring his artworks are on view at Gagosian in New York (through October 28): “to light, and then return,” which pairs his pieces with tintypes and platinum prints by Sally Mann, and “this must be the place,” a solo presentation displaying his porcelain vessels poetically arranged in vitrines, as well as stone benches carved from marble. As respected for his writing as he is for his pots, de Waal is the author of 20th Century Ceramics (2003), The Pot Book (2011), The White Road (2015), Letters to Camondo (2021), and, perhaps most notably, the New York Times bestseller The Hare with Amber Eyes (2010). All that de Waal does is part of one long continuum: He views his pots and texts as a single, rigorously sculpted body of work and ongoing conversation across time.

On this episode, de Waal talks about his infatuation with Japan, his affinity for the life and work of the Japanese-American artist Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988), and the roles of rhythm and breath in his work.

Special thanks to our Season 8 sponsor, Van Cleef & Arpels.

Show notes:

[00:28] Edmund de Waal

[03:43] Paul Celan

[08:12] 2023 Isamu Noguchi Award

[08:17] Gagosian

[08:20] “this must be the place”

[08:22] “to light, and then return”

[09:09] Twentieth-Century Ceramics

[09:20] The Pot Book

[18:23] “Letters to Camondo” Exhibition

[20:32] Sally Mann

[20:48] The Hare with Amber Eyes

[28:00] “The Hare with Amber Eyes” Exhibition

[30:56] “Playing with Fire: Edmund de Waal and Axel Salto” Exhibition

[40:24] Dr. Sen no Sōshitsu

[52:48] The White Road

[52:49] Letters to Camondo

[01:06:33] In Memory Of: Designing Contemporary Memorials

Special thanks to our Season 8 sponsor, Van Cleef & Arpels.

Show notes:

[00:28] Edmund de Waal

[03:43] Paul Celan

[08:12] 2023 Isamu Noguchi Award

[08:17] Gagosian

[08:20] “this must be the place”

[08:22] “to light, and then return”

[09:09] Twentieth-Century Ceramics

[09:20] The Pot Book

[18:23] “Letters to Camondo” Exhibition

[20:32] Sally Mann

[20:48] The Hare with Amber Eyes

[28:00] “The Hare with Amber Eyes” Exhibition

[30:56] “Playing with Fire: Edmund de Waal and Axel Salto” Exhibition

[40:24] Dr. Sen no Sōshitsu

[52:48] The White Road

[52:49] Letters to Camondo

[01:06:33] In Memory Of: Designing Contemporary Memorials

Previous Episode

Trent Davis Bailey on Finding Family and Community Through Photography

The artist and photographer Trent Davis Bailey (our host, Spencer Bailey’s, identical twin brother) continually seeks to unearth the tangled roots of his identity through his intensely personal and place-based work. This summer, his first-ever solo museum exhibition, “Personal Geographies” (on view through February 11, 2024)—a photographic exploration of memory, family, and place—opened at the Denver Art Museum, and this fall, he will release the corresponding project, “The North Fork,” in book form. Bailey is also currently at work on “Son Pictures,” an ongoing series of photographs piecing together fragments of his family’s past and present, some of which were recently published alongside a New York Times op-ed titled “What a Motherless Son Knows About Fatherhood.” Leading him to take deep-dives into newspaper and family photo archives, and from Colorado to Iowa to the Adirondacks, “Son Pictures” unpacks the loss of his mother, who died in a plane crash in 1989 when he was 3; his family’s attendant trauma and grief; and his present life, at 38, as a husband and parent of two toddlers.

On this episode—his and Spencer’s first formal “twinterview,” recorded last month on their 38th birthday—Bailey talks about what it was like to grow up as an identical twin, his unusual and decidedly dysfunctional upbringing, and photography as a device for commemoration.

Special thanks to our Season 8 sponsor, Van Cleef & Arpels.

Show notes:

[00:28] Trent Davis Bailey

[09:58] “The North Fork”

[10:02] “Personal Geographies” at the Denver Art Museum

[10:12] “What a Motherless Son Knows About Fatherhood”

[10:18] “Son Pictures”

[11:54] Paonia, Colorado

[20:10] California College of the Arts

[20:22] Museum of Contemporary Photography’s Snider Prize

[20:28] Robert Koch Gallery

[22:34] The Sublime

[23:52] The Hotchkiss Crawford Historical Museum/Society

[26:42] Robert Frank

[26:53] Stephen Shore

[26:55] Joel Sternfeld

[28:27] “A Kingdom From Dust”

[28:32] The California Sunday Magazine

[36:40] Rebecca Solnit

[45:43] United Airlines Flight 232

[45:46] Spencer Bailey Reflects on the Crash-Landing of United Airlines Flight 232

[45:56] Sioux City, Iowa

[46:02] Frances Lockwood Bailey

[56:42] International Center of Photography

[56:57] Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb

[59:55] Robert Frank “The Americans” Exhibition at the Met

[01:08:10] Lake Placid, New York

[01:14:24] Brooklyn Darkroom

Next Episode

Sanford Biggers on Patching Together the Past, Present, and Future Through Art

To Sanford Biggers, the past, present, and future are intertwined and all part of one big, long now. Over the past three decades, the Harlem-based artist has woven various threads of place and time—in ways not dissimilar to a hip-hop D.J. or a quilter—to create clever, deeply metaphorical, darkly humorous, and often beautiful work across a vast array of mediums, including painting, sculpture, video, photography, music, and performance. Among his standout works are “Oracle” (2021), a 25-foot-tall cast bronze sculpture that combines a Greco-Roman form with an African mask; his “BAM” series (2015) of gunshot statuettes; and his ongoing “Codex” series of quilts, which have, over his past decade of making them, become an especially potent and ritualistic part of his art-making.

On this episode, Biggers talks about the influence that musicians such as Mahalia Jackson, Ray Charles, and Stevie Wonder have had on his art; why he thinks of himself as a “material polyglot”; and why religious and spiritual works like reliquaries, shrines, and “power objects” are the bedrock of his practice.

Special thanks to our Season 8 sponsor, Van Cleef & Arpels.

Show notes:

[00:26] Sanford Biggers

[03:55] “Sanford Biggers with Yasi Alipour”

[07:14] “The Playful, Political Art of Sanford Biggers”

[12:34] Moon Medicin

[13:36] Mahalia Jackson

[13:39] Ray Charles

[13:40] Charles Mingus

[13:41] Thelonious Monk

[15:32] Stevie Wonder

[16:06] Prince